Episode 6How Digital Can Transform Your Business
The past two decades have seen digital technology becoming widely spread throughout the world and with it its usage for marketing. While Digital Marketing can be incredibly powerful, for a lot of business owners it is very confusing given the constant emergence of new technologies, strategies and tools. In this episode, we will take a look at how digital can help you transform your business.
Case study
Kings Academy, a martial arts gym for adults and children, faced a unique problem when splitting the business in 2016 with his partner. Not only did he have to ensure not to lose the current customers but he also had to become proficient in marketing which previously his partner handled.
Elvis has successfully used Digital Marketing to double his member numbers and quadruple his revenue and he continues to use it grow his business.
Case Study Key Takeouts
- Digital Marketing is a great tool for spreading the word about your company and products/services. Having a great company culture, product or service is no good if no one know about it. Digital Marketing can help you spread your message and reach new people.
- In order to achieve extraordinary results, you need to take small measured risks. Digital Marketing allows you to test, measure and quickly adjust without having to spend huge amounts of money.
- Record where each of your enquirers and new customers have heard about your business. For online enquiries this can often be recorded automatically but when it comes to phone calls and walk through the door customers, you will have to ask them directly in order to keep a record and measure what works.
- You can record your findings in a simple spreadsheet or can use a Customer Relationship Management software (CRM).
- When it comes to reaching new people digitally, you can and should build both on reaching them organically (e.g. through optimising your website for search engines in order to improve its ranking for relevant search terms or through engaging social media content that is being shared by your community) as well as paid advertising (e.g. paid Google Ads or social media advertising).
- As with traditional marketing, in Digital Marketing it is important to study, learn and understand what works for your business on a continuous basis.
- Don’t forsake word-of-mouth and traditional media over Digital Marketing. A combination of traditional and Digital Marketing is often most effective.
Marketing Panel
Michael Watkins
Digital Strategy and Capability Manager
Yellow
Anthony Bedrosian
Managing Director
Service Heroes
Dr. John Michalopoulos
Dentist and Owner
John Michalopoulos Dental
Panel Key Takeouts
How Digital Marketing Can Transform Your Business?
- Research conducted by Pureprofile reveals that Google is a popular medium for both under and over 45 year-olds in order to find out about new brands, products and services (76% for under 45 and 63% for over 45). However, for under 45 year-olds social media is much more used to find out about new products (69% for under 45 vs 28% for over 45) while over 45 year-olds rather rely on traditional media like TV, magazines and radio (63% for over 45 vs. 35% for under 45). Keep this in mind when choosing your strategy and platforms.
- When deciding whether Digital is right for you, think about where your customers are and how they are using Digital. This will give you an indication as to where you should be in order to persuade them to do business with you.
- When getting started with Digital Marketing, a first step should be to establish your online presence: consider getting a website as well as establishing profiles on various social media channels and/or digital, local listings depending on where your customers are most likely going to find you.
- If you don’t feel confident starting on the Digital Marketing journey yourself, try to find a partner (this can be a freelancer, an agency or other companies providing Digital Marketing services like Yellow). Hold them accountable for results.
- When establishing your business online, it makes sense to start with a few different platforms in order to be able to compare them and see which ones are most effective for your business and resonate best with your customers.
- Think about Digital not only from a marketing point of view but be creative in its usage. Online you can more easily research your market and competitors as well as industry trends, you can find new staff and digital can also help you in streamlining your business processes.
- Being online when your competitors are not can be enough point of difference in order to bring in new customers and drive revenue.
- Remember that the basics of marketing and the marketing funnel have not changed with Digital: First make potential customers aware of your business, get them to engage with you and choose you and finally keep your customers. Both digital as well as traditional methods in combination can help you draw potential customers into that funnel and convert them to actual customers.
How Can Digital Marketing Help You to Failure Proof Your Business?
- Use Digital in order to analyse customer feedback and to get an understanding of what your customers want. This will go a long way in terms of failure proofing your business from a Digital Marketing point of view.
- Utilise digital to communicate the strengths of your businesses and why customer should do business with you. Online reviews are the digital version of “Word-of-Mouth”.
- Digital can not only help you to attract new customer but also to help you to stay in contact with existing customers and service them. Think about sending a regular email newsletter with relevant and useful content to existing customers in order to stay top of mind.
- Marketing restrictions (e.g. in the medical space) should not hinder you to advertise at all.
- Try more than one method, measure success and repeat it.
- Remember, marketing – no matter whether traditional or digital – comes down to relationships, not platforms. Utilise the platforms in order to create and maintain and grow these relationships.